> they secretly sell drugs to America to make them useless and make society unstable
That is quite a non sequitur. Who is being forced to take drugs or listen to extremist propaganda? Those are deliberate choices made by people with low impulse control, and China has nothing to do with that.
The instability of American culture is currently seen as an intrinsic virtue. China is not causing any change. They're just apparently exploiting what was already the dumbest part of America. Even America's allies do this. If America finally grows up it would be a good thing and the only way that will probably happen is more self-inflicted disaster.
> All this feels like a rehash of the British Empire selling Opium to China in the 18th century. Only this time it's China supplying the United States ...
> That's pretty much the only thing China is actually doing.
Its not. Dont make up nonsense. The US is the only exception. Two years ago the Chinese state finally learned that keeping civilized discourse and refraining from calling out bullsht does not prevent the US from lying about them. Hence the US is the only country for which they are actually calling out its doublespeak.
I still think that they are acting way too civilized and reserved to be able to cope up with never-ending US sht slinging and lying.
>This seems a little hypocritical given that the US [...]
How is it hypocritical when the article doesn't even mention the US at all? It's possible to be critical of China's authoritarianism AND whatever the US's failures are.
> How is British care about humans when they started forcing Opium trade to China?
The fact of the matter is that the Chinese Government don't care about anyone except themselves and if you think for a second that they give a crap about the environment you are severely mistaken.
If you are going to engage in whataboutery especially things that happened well over a century ago and trying to compare the British Empire to the Chinese Regime that has killed over 50 million while it has been in place is either wholly ignorant or disingenuous. I am not going to bother talking to you.
> Why not? Just because they're a hypocrite doesn't mean they're wrong.
They are wrong. It boggles the mind how anyone refused to understand this. Talk about cutting the nose to spite the face.
> we applied that logic to the US (...)
Putting the blatant whataboutism aside, if you were trying to be honest then you'd be complaining that no one had the right to meddle in anyone else's affairs.
But no, to you having a totalitarian and extensively oppressive regime like the Chinese one, which I remind you is right now executing a blatant ethnic cleansing campaign that would impress Nazi germany, is somehow awesome because it's sabotaging the US?
>Its how the USA was built, seems a bit unfair to hold China to a different standard.
You mean it seems unfair to hold China to the same standard in 2023 that every other developed nation is held to? Instead, they should get to rewind to the 1800s? Should we turn a blind eye to what's happening to the uighurs too, because Native Americans?
All of that is ignoring the IP theft that occurred early on in US history isn't anything even remotely resembling what China has done. You're comparing someone having a bonfire to the Canadian wildfires and acting as though they're the same magnitude.
> As for Tibet - they did, 70 years ago. And they changed it from a theocratic, medieval shithole with economy based on slavery, into a proper place to live.
What by destorying monastaries, killing people. Please. Tibet is not better off under China.
> [citation needed]
You living under a rock? China threw its toys out of the cot all week due to delegates flying to Taiwan.
Taiwan is not part of China, never has been, and has no right to threaten anyone for having any sort of relationship with Taiwan.
Edit: I see, not living under a rock, just hate America and believe China propaganda.
> you seem to think it was to the Chinese people's benefit to have foreigners force the Chinese government, at the barrel of a gun, to allow opium into the country.
The Chinese people wanted to buy opium. They obviously thought it was to their benefit.
BTW, the US war on drugs has not been of benefit to this country.
> I want to make people aware of this [...] how this kind of attitude could be interpreted by Chinese people
I hear this all the time from friends here in the US who think we are a horrible country and that we are only a superpower because we did a lot of terrible things to get there (which is true), so we deserve anything bad coming our way, and we should just step aside for China's ascendency because they're just using our colonial-era, upstart (ex: theft of intellectual property) playbook and if that upsets us we're hypocrites - the ultimate sin, apparently.
To which I say: So. What.
We need to be political realists, because China certainly is. Other considerations are simply irrelevant.
>> The difference is that China is doing these things today. Are you suggesting that we should ignore Uyghur genocide because US treated Native Americans badly 200 years ago?
Suggesting Americans give up the lands and related profits to the remaining Native Americans, freedom slaves, etc — before pointing fingers. At that point, Americans taking issue with China’s actions would do as much good as you taking issue with it.
>> Do you seriously think that China is competing fairly with US? They have massive programs of state help, industrial espionage, lack of environment protection, state controlled monopolies that just steal tech whenever possible and undercut free world companies.
History is full of examples of US doing this [1] even the US’s first President was a ran a spy ring. Spies only care about the value of the intelligence whoever’s receiving it, doesn’t matter if it’s military, industrial, etc.
> Historically, the West opened up to China as China economically liberalized
We "opened up" china by war. Opium wars? Boxer rebellion? I'm not chinese and I seem to know your history more than you. Why is that? And china opened up their economy as a result of threat of nuclear war by the soviets and the west.
> in the hopes that China would also grant more freedoms to its people.
This is just propaganda. Since when did we care about freedom for chinese people? Did we invade hong kong while the british ruled it to give freedom to them? Heck, for most of the 20th century, chinese people like you were banned from even coming to the US. The only nationality to specifically be banned for immigration to the US was your people.
> Now, China is also trying to expand its territory.
You mean take back its territory right? What non-chinese territory is china expanding to?
> I fear that Chinese hegemonic status will have negative consequences for other Asian peoples.
More propaganda.
> I hope that one day, people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
More standard propaganda.
> people in China may enjoy their right to a liberal democracy.
The founders hated the idea of liberal democracy. It's why the US is not a liberal democracy but a constitutional republic. You seem to be very keen on what the US was founded for. It wasn't for equality and it certainly wasn't for liberal democracy.
It's hard to take you seriously when you claim to be chinese and you spout anti-chinese propaganda. Not just in this comment but your other comments - "false moral equivalence", "US was founded on the idea of all men are created equal", etc. It would be like an iraqi claiming that the US invaded iraq to bring freedom. You sound exactly like gordon chang except I don't think he's aspiring to be a hacker. And for an aspiring hacker you sure seem down on your state propaganda.
> we feel like we cannot change anything about China and how it governs its people
Who are we to change anything about china? Talk about hubris. Considering the horrors and war crimes we committed against china for 150 years, I don't think china is interested on our input.
> After reading about the uigher concentration camps in China
That's as silly as a chinese person saying after reading about the native american "concentrations", they need to take a stand.
> I don’t want to help the government terrorize my friends in China anymore.
Your friends? If the government is "terrorizing" your friends, what are they doing in china?
Get off your high horse. We aren't the world police and we certainly aren't saints. Pretending we are "moral" while destabilizing countries and murdering hundreds of thousands of innocent people is rather hypocritical.
> linking this to the Opium Wars smells like a conspiracy theoroy. This isn't some pay-back for the crimes the East-Indian Company and the West committed against China back then.
Sorry! I just wanted to point out some of the historical context. I don't have a particular fish to fry here.
> why would anyone in China care as long as they don't sell this in China.
That's a bit uncharitable, eh? There are a billion and a half people people in China, they can't all be moral cretins, can they?
So just like what the British empire did to China during the century of humiliation with opium? Mainlander hypocrisy is comical
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